HarveysWBs

So New York doesn’t know what the coach was saying. The coach put hands on Walker first. But Walker shoving him merits an ejection?

It’s ok to enjoy good things happening without trying to fit into the narrative.

Oh what a catch by Doubs!

DJ Moore really, really, looks like somebody who needs to get away. And, I mean, if nobody has a destination in mind, I could maybe come up with a suggestion.

Sometimes I like to play a little game. It’s called “How can the Packers hurt me the most?” Green Bay drops three straight to East-division teams, looking absolutely moribund and in need of a scorched earth rebuild while all of their recent draft picks look like dumpster fires. At this point I would be ready to resign myself to a lost year, at minimum. But this is the Packers we’re talking about, the producers of pain. So they’ll prepare and play like their season depends on it (which, to be fair, it does) and pull out a win in Buffalo. Rodgers will wink a few times in the postgame interview, drop a new catchphrase, w/e. Then Gute gets on the phone, actually completes a trade for a difference-making WR, sacrificing major draft capital. Hope springs eternal. Meanwhile, Bakh’s knee remains balky and he plays only intermittently for the rest of the year, and the offensive line remains a total liability, Joe Barry, fresh off a shocking turnaround against Buffalo’s high-octane offense, returns to his normal passive defense, and the so-called “playmakers” continue to deliver stunningly boneheaded miscues rest of season. They manage a few wins against pathetic teams, but never by more than a score. Final record: 8-9, no playoffs, Rodgers retires, and there’s precious little draft capital to build with. That might be how they hurt me the most. Either that or another miracle run to an NFC championship game they have no business being in, so our draft picks are even worse next year. Either way.

Well that was a more fun lateral sequence than they usually are.

Not an ideal time for Jaire to have his worst game as a pro.

Aaron Jones. Our best wide receiver.

They can’t buy a deep play. Unbelievable.

Heck, Ejiro Evero looks quite good in Denver right now. I’d take some of that.

Wheels coming off, now. This team looks cooked.

Doubs is brutal. The whole draft class has been brutal. Had to have a couple immediate difference makers with all that draft capital and we’re getting nothing.

Not sure what I’m less confident in over the next 15 minutes: the offense getting a TD or the defense not giving up any more points.

Never go against the family, Tom.

This team is such a brutal watch right now.

Yeah, I’m inspired to go do chores.

Eh, I don’t have a problem with the challenge on the fumble. That’s a coin-flip proposition. His first challenge was bizarre.

I think I’d rather risk Jaire at PR over any more Amari. It’s just ridiculous. We live with obvious problems until they torpedo games, then make changes. Disgusting.

Saw this from Saleh after the game and...what can you say? I mean, I don't know how MLF even gets out of bed tomorrow. The man is your best friend on the planet earth*, and his team doesn't just emasculate yours on the field, he talks about how he told his team that it was going to happen at halftime, and that your team would let it happen. And that is exactly how it played out. Someday, a sports historian will write the definitive history of the decade-plus since the Super Bowl over Pittsburgh, and their thesis can simply be this press conference. All you had to do to beat the Packers was hit them in the mouth over and over again, and they would give in to you. Maybe it would happen early, maybe it would be later, but the Packers wouldn't hit back. And that is all she wrote. *As a separate, but possibly related issue, maybe LaFleur should stop talking about football people being his friends. These things don't seem to work out too well afterwards. The only one he can beat consistently is McVay, while Shanahan and Saleh beat him like a rented mule repeatedly, especially when the Packers most seem to need a win. I have seen more than a few observers question whether LaFleur has what it takes to be a top-level coach in this league. I can't even begin to have enough information to make that determination, but I know that from the outside, games like this happening so frequently does nothing for the perception of his quality. Of course, how well do any of us know anyone who is any sort of celebrity, but by all accounts LaFleur is one of the most genuine, kind-hearted, and stand-up guys in the business. I recall an August article in The Ringer about LaFleur (in hindsight, rather cringingly titled "Is This the Year Matt LaFleur Finally Gets the Credit He Deserves"). In it is a salient passage talking to Dolphins HC McDaniel (another fruit off the Shanahan/McVay tree) and his insight into LaFleur: I have thought of this quote often as the last few months have progressed. It suggests that, number one, virtues like those held by LaFleur are not the norm in this line of work. And, number two, while I would certainly not pin all of the agonizing inability of the organization to reach the top on a sort of "aw, shucks, we're just too swell a guy to be a champion" line of argument, it has some legs to it. LaFleur is miles away from a Belichick, or even a Saleh or a Shanahan. You look at LaFleur and how he reacted to Shanahan after the 49ers tried to poach Rodgers during the offseason of discontent, and LaFleur seemed genuinely wounded. The whole affair had noticeably soured their relationship as if LaFleur sincerely believed there were lines, even in football, that a man should not cross with his friends. The post-game handshake after the regular season win in 2021 only reiterated this; they looked like anything but friends at that point. Maybe none of Shanahan, Saleh, or McDaniels (who certainly has some of the luster off his reputation for virtue after the Tua incident this year), or any of the others in his circle ever win a championship. And LaFleur's story seems far from finished at this point. But I am reasonably certain whose mindset and attitude dominates this league, and it isn't LaFleur's. I can't help but wonder, in twenty or thirty years time, who will be most condemned by this assessment, LaFleur or the league? Will succeeding generations look back and wonder at our savagery, as we lifted up an industry and turned it into the most-watched, most-lucrative sporting spectacle in American history, and missed the inherent inhumanity of it all? Will our descendants marvel with horror at our kinship with the ancient Romans, who spilled day after day into arenas across an empire not so different than our own, lusting for blood and bragging rights amidst a bacchanalian atmosphere of gluttony and intoxication, as men became monsters for our amusement? And oh how we cheered that men might give of their bodies--and of their very souls--that their names might be etched on a monument of silver, and figuratively carry us to immortality along with them. But, never mind. Just another Sunday night for this faithful fan, and perhaps I'm just the one with too much intoxication.

I’ve just had to sit here and laugh about half a dozen times today. For two months, I’ve expected the team to show growth, even if it is slow. Instead, they get worse. This year, they’re healthier and more talented in every sense except WR. But the results are abysmal. I keep assuming the people in charge have to be smarter than this, but they seem hell-bent on demonstrating their manifest unfitness for their roles, week after week after week. I think I need to disengage from sports. Nothing is worth this.

I partially agree with you, since I don’t think Rodgers has really hit the wall as hard as the numbers suggest (although in the first half of the Giants game, he had Cobb for six up the seam and just threw a duck into the defender’s back instead of putting it out in front, so it isn’t like this is all just an MVS/Watson dropped passes situation). However, you are absolutely correct in that having a player that can get open without always having to be schemed open is an issue, and that in theory, the solution is in-house. But the law firm of Watson and Watkins is currently in the ambulance instead of chasing it. I’d be all the way down for a trade. If Moore or Claypool comes available, I’m not sure I’d even balk at a 1st rounder, if they have reason to think Rodgers is done after this year. But I’m not expecting anything to happen, because we’ve all seen this movie before.

I agree with a lot of what has been said here. Interestingly, Andy Herman had Cobb as the second-highest graded Packer in the Giants game—which is great! Until you realize that it mostly came in the first half, and Cobb had a brutal drop in the second half when the Packers desperately needed offense, and oh by the way the only player to grade higher was Romeo Doubs who got like four targets… But by some metrics, the offense is tantalizingly close. The staple plays (designed runs as well as run/pass options) of the system are actually more effective this year than last year. But want the nightmare scenario? Rodgers has been solved. In this offense they use so many RPOs (which is both a MLF system thing and a Rodgers likes to diagnose pre-snap thing) that a defensive play caller can effectively dictate to the offense what is going to happen, ala Wink Martindale in the second half this past week (as the antithesis to Joe Barry, who probably hasn’t dictated anything in his life, not even to Siri). How, you ask? By simply loading the box and showing single safety and/or cover zero. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Rodgers checks to the pass (thus neutralizing Green Bay’s best player on offense, Aaron Jones), most of the rushers come but maybe a random one drops into coverage, and one of three things happens next: 1) Newman folds like a cheap suit for a sack/throwaway, 2) Rodgers forces the ball to his predetermined target with no time to go through progressions for a short gain/incomplete, or 3) finds the guy who has beat single coverage. Now you’d probably think, “ok, the defense is gambling on getting options one or two, but three is a big win for the Packers, right?” Except Rodgers has become Drew Brees in just the last two years. He can’t throw deep, to the point that even attempting it is now actively hurting the offense. As I and others have said, getting Newman off the field will help a lot, but it may be academic if Rodgers can’t start connecting on deep balls. If that part of his game stays this bad, the Packers are probably cooked.

Saw someone doing yeoman’s work on the Packers subreddit today. They broke down pts per drive based on how they used Aaron Jones in the first three plays. Result: running Jones at least once in the first three plays of the drive yielded twice as many average points as the much-maligned pass-pass-pass approach. Aaron Jones is the captain now.

There’s no sugar-coating today, and I know no one is in the mood to hear any defense of MLF, but allow me to violate law one of internet discourse (never get in the way of a good tar and feathering) for a moment and remind everyone that the next time MLF loses two regular season games in a row will be the first. This is a team with a lot of pride, a lot of veterans, and a home date against the New York Jets. They’re embarrassed right now, and deserve to be. They need to get three things right, and it’s pretty straight forward: 1) Overhaul the right side of the offensive line. Newman needs to be on the bench, and that probably means Jenkins is at RG, and either Tom or Nijman goes to RT. This also means Bakh should just be full-go at LT. I’ve been on record here not getting my hopes up about his performance and availability this year, and I think they’ve been perfectly careful with him, but I don’t think they can wait anymore. Time to let it rip. 2) Communicate in the secondary. Yes, there will still be some fair criticisms of the schematic issues for Barry (especially an unwillingness to bring pressure, which, if used judiciously, will be immensely helpful), but Barry did seem to make some needed changes today, at least to my amateur eyes. He seemed more willing to have defenders closer to the LOS, and really, they did the thing everyone believed they had to do to keep this game in hand: not let Barkley beat them. But the secondary had its worst game in what feels like years. I mean, the NFC CG against Brady still hurts, but that was mostly just one guy (King). This game and the Minnesota game involved massive failure at multiple levels, and has to be an issue with assignments. They can be better, but it’s on them to figure it out. 3) Run the football. They need to do it now, and they sure as heck better be prepared to keep doing it if they expect to flip the playoff script this year. I feel pretty good about some immediate progress on 1 and 3, and expect a comfortable win over NYJ. But if not…look out. The narrative will be worse than it has been since McCarthy.

The thing that disturbs me the most isn’t even the defense. It has been twelve years of this crap, and plenty of scar tissue on those wounds. But this team going where it needs to go absolutely, 100% depends on learning the most important lesson of the second-half of Rodgers’ tenure: when the games matter most, late in the year, in difficult conditions, throwing 35-40 times is going to get you beat, even with Rodgers. Jones and Dillon are either going to be equal partners to Rodgers in this system, or they’re going home early again. I thought the team had finally figured this out, but early returns are not encouraging.